Oh, that's just grate!
by Inspector Brown
Summary: An Alpha Force short story. After an illtimed practical joke, Liquegirl ends up falling through a grate in the sidewalk. How will the team get her out? I may write more of these if the response is good.


"Okay," Dash said as he and his teammates left the theater, "I was willing to believe that Darth Vader was Luke's father, but there is no way that Leia could be his twin sister!"

"I don't know," said Violet, "it made sense to me."

"What really bothered me were those people that kept shushing us," said José.

"Yeah, didn't they see that we had a blind girl in our company?" added Kim.

"Hey, it would bug me if I were them," said Ashley.

"I'm surprised to hear you say that," noted Violet.

"I'm surprised to hear me say it too."

Dash reached into his pocket and fingered the rubber spider therein. He had wanted to pull this stunt during the movie, but he got so engrossed in the plot that he forgot all about it.

_I guess now is as good a time as any,_ he thought.

Quietly he snuck up on Kim and meticulously planted the spider in her hair.

"Oh my God, Kim, there's something in your hair!" Dash shouted at the top of his lungs.

Kim was struck with fantastic fear. She waved and batted at her hair, trying to dislodge the foreign object. In all this panic, she didn't notice that she had liquefied, and was about to step on a grate in the middle of the sidewalk!

The next thing anyone knew, Kim was in a storm drain line.

"KIM!" Violet shouted, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine; I think my fluidity broke my fall. How did I end up in here?"

Dash leaned over and explained himself.

"Dash, I am so disappointed in you," Kim scolded.

"You're right, I'm sorry, now can we move on to something more important?"

"Well, what's more important than you treating your fiancée with a little respect?"

"Oh, gee, I don't know, how about getting you out of there?"

"Great idea, Dash," said José, "except for one thing: How are we supposed to go about getting her out?"

"I have an idea!" Kim shouted. "I'm going to see if I can climb up."

She threw herself up against a nearby wall, engaging her power as she did. She stuck to the wall quite tightly. She tried to flow up the wall, hoping to reach the grate and flow back onto the street. But when she got halfway up, gravity started to do its thing. Kim could feel herself seeping downward, even dripping once in a while. At one point, it was all she could do to stay in one place. Exhausted, she let herself drop back to the bottom.

"So much for that theory," she said with melancholy.

The rest of them started to brainstorm.

"Maybe we can throw down a rope and pull her out," José suggested.

"Sounds like a good idea," noted Violet, "but where are we going to get some rope?"

"Maybe we could use our shoelaces. Yeah, if we tied them all together, maybe it will be long enough."

"That's the silliest idea I've ever heard of," Dash heckled.

"Do you have a better one?" José challenged.

Alas, Dash didn't have a better idea. So the four of them unlaced their shoes and tied them into a nice long rope. Then, José lowered it down the grate to where Kim could grab it. As José started to pull, he realized that Kim was much heavier than he thought she would be. Fortunately, his heart started to pound like a drum, activating his super-strength. Unfortunately, the rope wasn't as strong as its operator was. When Kim was only halfway up, the knots came undone, and you can figure out what happened next.

"Perfect," Ashley complained. "Now we have two problems. Not only is Kimberly trapped, but our shoelaces are gone too."

"What do we do now?" wondered Violet.

"We go back to the drawing board, that's what we do," Kim hollered from the storm drain. At that moment, Kim thought she heard something move. "Um, guys, could you hurry it up a bit?"

Ashley had an idea. "What if someone goes down there and pulls her out?"

"Not a bad idea," José said, "but how are we going to get to where she is?"

"And once we're there," added Dash, "how will _we_ get out?"

"I think I know how we can get down there," Violet said, "but we're going to need José's powers to do it."

"Okay, what's your idea?"

"All right, once José gets his powers up and running, he can use his fire and his strength to rip open a hole in the grate big enough for one of us to fit through."

So the team tried Violet's idea out, and it worked! Sure enough, there was now a hole big enough to accommodate a human being. They were all elated, until…

"Hey, wait a minute!" shouted Kim. "You guys still haven't figure out how to anchor yourselves!"

All at once, their joy fled like a fugitive.

"I've got it!" said Dash. "Ashley, I need you to use your telekinesis to lower me into the sewer."

"Okay, but I don't see how this will help," she said.

Ashley knit her brow, like she always did when she was concentrating. She managed to grab a hold on Dash and lift him off the ground. She inverted him in mid-air, and then brought him down head first onto what she thought was the hole.

"OW! Ashley!" Dash screamed, "That's not the hole!"

"Oh, sorry, you're going to have to lead me."

"Um, a little to the right…no, no, no, my right!…Oof, ow!"

"Sorry!"

"A little further…now a hair toward you…no, you went too far, go back…there we are, now lower me slowly…I said slowly!"

Soon, Dash was hovering next to the love of his life.

"Hey there, beautiful. Come here often?"

Kim gave him a wet slap across the cheek.

"Ow!"

"That's for letting me fall down here in the first place!" she said.

"I guess I deserve it," he said. "Now, are you coming or not?"

Kim gripped Dash's arms tightly as Ashley pulled them both up and out of the storm drain. She set them gently back onto the sidewalk.

"Whew!" Kim sighed, "Glad that's over. Let's go home."

They were walking for no more than ten seconds when they heard a muted scream. When they looked around, they saw that Violet was missing!

"Vi? Honey, where are you?" José wondered aloud.

"Down here, you guys," Violet said incredulous.

"Here we go again," Ashley said with a heavy sigh.


End file.
